North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Copeland Leads Men's Golf into ACCs
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
BY TIM PEELER
Not yet a high school freshman, Copeland was riding home from a golf tournament with two teammates in a part of
The index and middle fingers on Copeland’s right hand were crushed. Surgeons weren’t sure they could save either of them, with the only alternative being amputation. Copeland, barely 15, knew what that meant: gripping a golf club would be practically impossible. He faced the real possibility that his promising golf career would be over before it ever really began.
Copeland considers that day to be the luckiest of his life, not because doctors were able to save his fingers. And not because some 30 seconds before the collision the boys passed a police car and quickly buckled their seat belts, which prevented them from being thrown out the open windows.
That was the day that he learned how much he wanted to succeed in golf, a game he first began playing with his parents at Lake Hickory Country Club when he was in the first grade. Golf was a big part of the Copeland family, including weekend outings, week-day lessons and annual trips to
“At the time, I was a little burned out on golf,” Copeland said. “I had been playing a lot of golf from a young age, but I was not having a lot of fun with it. I was doing it, not because it was something I loved, but it was something I was good at.”
But during 12 months of recovery and excruciating rehabilitation, Copeland discovered how much missed the sport. He couldn’t play basketball or football, either, as he planned to do at
Getting back on the course was not easy. He had six or seven surgeries to save his fingers, including painful skin grafts from his upper forearm. He still has two pins in his permanently bent middle finger. While he was recovering,
“Rehabilitation was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life,” Copeland said.
He came back as a sophomore and helped the team finish second in the state 3-A tournament. As a junior, the Red Tornadoes won the state title by the largest margin in history, with Copeland finishing fourth as an individual. As a senior, he finished sixth.
Initially, NC State men’s golf coach Richard Sykes did not recruit Copeland. He saw the youngster play in a junior tournament and thought he was a wild horse that could not be tamed. So Copeland accepted a scholarship to UNC Greensboro. After only a year there, he decided to transfer.
By then, Sykes had seen him play and regretted not pursuing him a little harder out of high school. When he got a call saying Copeland was considering a transfer, Sykes was interested, especially if Copeland would sit out his redshirt season. Sykes already had three potential starters Darren Blair, Andrew Byrd and Chase Duncan in the same academic class, and he didn’t want a fourth.
“You can only use five scores in a tournament, and I didn’t want the lineup overloaded with guys in the same class,” Sykes said.
Copeland agree to sit out a season, and made his Wolfpack debut in the Bank of Tennessee at the Ridges Tournament in
In the spring, Copeland has been a regular in the starting lineup for the Wolfpack, posting a stroke average of 72.8 in the Wolfpack’s five spring tournaments. Heading into the ACC Championships which begin today at the Old North State Club in
He was third in last weekend’s River Landing Intercollegiate in Wallace, helping the Wolfpack finish second among the 15 teams in the field.
“We started the season out poorly,” Copeland said, referring to the Wolfpack’s ninth place finish out of 15 teams at the Puerto Rico Classic and the 16thplace finish of 18 teams at the Schenkel E-Z-Go Invitational in
“We kind of grew as a team. We changed some things around. Chemistry-wise, when you have guys you believe in and know are going to play well, it takes a little pressure off of you and allows you to play well. At the beginning of the year, we were struggling to find a lineup we really like. We started to practice harder and now we are starting to reap the benefits.”
The Wolfpack has one more tournament, the Cavalier Classic in
For Copeland, there are no lingering effects from the accident he had nearly six years ago. The screws are still in his middle finger, but he doesn’t know of any limitations that it might place on his grip or his swing.
“I can’t really say how it has affected my grip, because I didn’t look at it before the accident to know how it is different now,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have lost anything. I am very fortunate.”
So he’s taking advantage of being an integral part of the Wolfpack’s program. Two weeks ago in Augusta, he talked to former NC State All-America Tim Clark about the mental toughness it takes to be successful on the PGA Tour, and he’s
clearly thinking about that kind of future for himself. Clearly, thoughts of golf burn-out are a distant memory.
“The sky is the limit,” Copeland said of his future in the sport. “If you don’t believe that, why even try?”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
